


As in love with you as I am

by Yuu_chi



Category: Half Life Trilogy - Sally Green
Genre: Angst, Gabriel really needs a hug, M/M, introspective
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-03
Updated: 2015-05-03
Packaged: 2018-03-28 21:21:39
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,309
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3870178
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yuu_chi/pseuds/Yuu_chi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Being with Nathan like this - loving him like this - is torture.</p>
            </blockquote>





	As in love with you as I am

Gabriel has the same thought every morning, breathes out the words in the silent space between sleep and wakefulness.

 _This is it,_ he says to himself, _I’ve reached my limit. It’s impossible to love a single person more than this._

He spends his day with those thoughts at the back of his mind, cluttered away behind the immediacy of whatever danger they’re in today, but never so far back that they don’t shudder and whisper in his ear whenever he so much as looks at Nathan.

 _I love you_ , he says to Nathan’s back with words that are as quiet as they are true.

.

When Nathan sketches he tilts his head, exposing the olive skimmed skin of his neck, the dark brands of the tattoo catching on moles and freckles that Gabriel hadn’t even known were there. He chews on his pencils, smears charcoal thoughtlessly along his cheek when he tries to scratch with earth-dirty hands. He frowns, licks at chapped lips and sometimes – although rarely – he gives the barest hint of an unconscious smile.

Gabriel leans forward and wipes away whatever smudge Nathan has and Nathan doesn’t even wince; trusts Gabriel so completely and he knows that Nathan would never be – has never been – this free with anybody else a day in his life.

 _I love you_ , he thinks but doesn’t say as his thumb grazes along the black-speckled peak of his cheekbone.

.

 _This is it_ , Gabriel thinks the next morning with iron certainty, _this is finally it; there’s no room to love him any more._

.

Nathan doesn’t eat the way most people do; doesn’t have the patience for the way Gabriel cooks whenever he can, tries to keep them running on something more than fumes and the push-and-pull energy of a revolution.

He snatches bites in-between; in-between _what_ is surely the question, but Gabriel thinks it might as well just be _life_. Nathan eats because he has to, takes whatever is at hand, whenever it is at hand, and hoards things in pockets and knapsacks with the kind of easiness of a child who is used to being hungry and alone.

Gabriel doesn’t try to fix it, Nathan’s flightiness and restraint, because he can recognize self-preservation when he sees it and Nathan has spent too much of his life on the run to be anything but fiercely cautious.

Instead Gabriel makes sure to stay with him where he can, to sit with him and have a meal rather than a feeding and make conversation over chocolate smothered croissants that Nathan turns his nose up at and tells Gabriel he’s one day going to be fat and slow and Nathan isn’t going to be the one to save him.

Gabriel laughs at him and Nathan rolls his beautiful dark eyes but doesn’t pull away, stays with Gabriel and lets himself be drawn into childish bickering and when Gabriel shoves his croissant up under his nose Nathan gives an exaggerated put upon sigh, but leans forward and takes a bite.

His hair is in his eyes and he licks away chocolate from his mouth, raises his brow at Gabriel as if to _ask are you happy now?_

 _I love you,_ Gabriel thinks and itches to taste the sweet sugar on Nathan’s lips.

.

 _No more_ , Gabriel thinks when morning light pulls him awake, _he’s everything to me, I have nothing more to give here. Please stop, because soon there’s not going to be room in me for anything else_.

.

Nathan fights with a wildness to him that is more beast than human; silent footfalls that turn quickly to sharp teeth and low growls that rumble up and out; a volcano rather than thunder.

They never sparred when Gabriel was Fain because he knew Nathan didn’t think he could control himself; had been taught to hurt and hurt bad, never to pull punches and to break bones and shatter anything that he touched.

“It’s not a good idea,” he says uncomfortably when Gabriel is finally a Black Witch again and asks for it. He doesn’t say anything else but Gabriel sees his gaze flicker to the scar that Gabriel still has from the time in the apartment in Geneva.

“This isn’t like that,” he tells Nathan but Nathan shakes his head at him, reaches out so that his warm, rough fingers can skate along the hitch above his eye with a kind of gentle carefulness that Gabriel has only seen when Nathan has a pencil in his hand and art blooming under his fingertips.

“I don’t ever want to cause you pain again,” Nathan says, matter-of-fact and unrepentant and completely unaware of the way that Gabriel’s heart shudders unpleasantly in his ribcage.

He thinks of Nathan’s bare skin and his scars and the way he laughs too quick and too high like he’s afraid somebody is going to call him on it; the way Nathan loves fiercely and deeply and so completely that it makes Gabriel fall for him all over again; he thinks of the mornings he wakes up convinced that he couldn’t possibly love Nathan more than he already does and of the nights he goes to sleep with the knowledge that he’d been wrong, that he loves Nathan so much more with every passing day and it –

It’s painful. It’s so, so painful.

It’s being seventeen again and seeing his house go up in flames, the feeling inside of him when his mother had died.

He thinks of how confused he’d been after Michele, sitting at the kitchen table with her diary in his hands and wondering how she could throw her life away like that. These days he gets it though; how sometimes a love is worth the way you know it’s going to end.

Nathan hurts him every day, hurts him by just being himself. It’s not Nathan’s fault, it’s not fair, Gabriel can’t blame him for it, but it doesn’t change anything.

Gabriel looks at Nathan and thinks about how he never wants to be anywhere but by his side for the rest of his life and Nathan looks at Gabriel and thinks _I wish you were Annalise._

He sees it in his face sometimes, the wistful lines that twist his mouth and the faraway glimmer in his eyes.

Nathan’s hand is still on his face, fingers soft where they trail down to press against his cheek. He’s waiting for Gabriel to say something back, but Gabriel’s mouth is dry and his words are sticky and hot in his chest.

 _I love you_ , he thinks a little desperately _, I love you more than I have words to say, more and more every day. Every morning I wake up and you’ve taken away another piece of me I didn’t even know I had left to belong to you._

He thinks, _take it_ _;_ _take every part of me. It’s yours. It’ll always be yours._

And, _you are everything, Nathan Byrn. One day you’re going to die and it’s going to be a bad and bloody death, and all those pieces of me you have will die with you and without you here I’ll have no reason to go on. I’ll just stop, like a clock with nobody to wind it._

Gabriel breathes in deeply and he smiles at Nathan and it feels like the stiff way his lips twist is going to tear skin and crack his face into something messy and unrecognizable and maybe then Nathan will understand that he doesn’t have to _do_ anything to hurt Gabriel.

“Okay,” Gabriel says, and it’s the biggest lie he’s ever told.

“Okay?” Nathan repeats and Gabriel closes his eyes and nods.

 _I love you_ , he thinks, and knows one day he’s going to say it aloud, and when he does Nathan is going to say _I love you too_ but what he’s really going to mean is _sorry_.

**Author's Note:**

> So I thought "hey, let's do a quick 3am drabble about how painful it must be to be Gabriel and be so in love with Nathan". And then it wasn't a drabble. And Gabriel just suffered a lot.
> 
> Title from Angels by The XX


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